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Patient Narrative - Christina Melendez - entry eight: Gi-Gi's Healing Touch

Yvonne fell asleep holding me, right after we moved from the sofa to my bed. That night I wasn't able to sleep, even though I was dead tired from the stressful streaking run and spanking her. That sucked, because in just a couple of hours I'd have to get up to make breakfast and get ready for school. After her breathing changed, I gently disengaged myself so I could make sure the house was locked and that everything in the kitchen was turned off. Then I remembered her clothes in the laundry room. I figured I'd better move them to the dryer, or else she wouldn't have anything dry to wear to school the next day.

When I pulled her clothes out of the washer, I realized why she always kept her sweatshirt zipped when she was going to or getting off work. Along with her school clothes and five pairs of short-shorts, there were several light green and light pink t-shirts marked with the logo:

Gi-Gi's
Healing Touch

Well, that certainly answered a lot of my questions: why she was so good at giving massages, her strange schedule, and why she smelled the way she did when she got off work. It turned out my girlfriend worked at a massage parlor.

I thought about putting her clothes back into the washer, pretend I had not seen the t-shirts, and let her deal with them when she woke up. But I decided that no, there was no point in letting her continue hiding her job from me, nor was there any point in me pretending I didn't know. Anyhow, if I didn't move the clothes, they'd still be wet in the morning and she'd have to borrow something from me to wear to school. I'd simply let the truth come out.

However, I did want to make sure she didn't think I was deliberately snooping in her laundry, so I filled the washing machine with a bunch of towels and turned it on. That way I could legitimately say I needed to move her clothes to the dryer to make room for the towel load, and that I was not snooping in her stuff.

The fact Yvonne worked at a massage parlor didn't bother me at all. People have to earn money however they can. When I was little, my mom was a barista and my dad worked for an immigration lawyer who later got busted for scamming some of his customers. While working for the lawyer, my dad ran scams of his own on the side, and that was how he got the money he invested in crypto-currencies. So who would I have been to judge? At least giving massages was honest work, something that I considered perfectly legitimate.

I was more curious about the conditions at Gi-Gi's than anything else: what her job was like, what she thought about her customers and co-workers, how she managed to hide what she was doing from dad and step-mother, and how she even got her job in the first place.

I got back in bed and had just gotten to sleep when I felt the mattress move. Yvonne had suddenly woken up and rushed to the laundry room. She returned to the room with tears in her eyes.

"Why'd you have to touch my fucking clothes? Why?"

"Because your stuff isn't the only thing I gotta wash. I got my own stuff too. So, yes, I did need to move your stuff. What? So, you're telling me you didn't want it dry?"

She sat on the bed. She put her head in her hands. I continued:

"You seriously think I give a fuck about your job? Why would I care? It'd only bother me if I thought you might get hurt or something."

She looked up, her eyes still full her tears.

"You're seriously not creeped-out?"

"No! I'm not creeped out! Not unless you think I should be."

We were quiet for a moment, before I continued:

"What I am pissed about is that you wanted to hide this from me. You seriously didn't think you could trust me?"

"I dunno. It's... complicated. Complicated, 'cause of the people at school, you know, what they'd think. And, 'cause of my old man. He'd break my neck if ever he found out."

"I'm not your group at school. And I'm not your old man. And I'm not creeped-out. Honest."

She hugged me. I could tell she was still crying. Then I thought about something. Just a few hours earlier she had been desperate for me to spank her. Because of that desire, she got insanely reckless and we came within seconds of being arrested. So, was it possible that in reality, it was being stressed about her job that was the real reason she wanted to be spanked? That for some reason she was bothered by what she did for a living? I decided to try something.

"Yvonne, you had this whole weird thing with spanking last night. I think you definitely owe me another spanking over this shit with your job. There's nothing wrong with what you're doing, but I'm kinda hurt you didn't trust me. I'm gonna take it out on your ass. What do you think?"

She nodded. "Yeah. For sure."

She hugged me tighter. So, it turned out I was right. There was a submissive side to her that made her want to be spanked. There was still a lot that I'd have to figure out about what she really wanted and needed, but it looked like spankings were definitely on her list.

"We're gonna wait a couple of days. Let you heal up from last night. But then, you're getting another spanking. It looks like something you need. It's not gonna be for a while, but it is coming, and I want you to think about it."

I looked at the window and noticed it was already light outside. If we left my house immediately, we'd barely make it to school on time. We had to rush getting dressed and skip breakfast. Going to school with no sleep and no breakfast. Yeah, it was gonna be a great day... Not!

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It was cold and rainy over the next week, which cooled Yvonne's desire to go streaking. Instead, we spent time in the pool and the hot tub. We spent our afternoons practicing yoga and massages: I taught her the basics of yoga and she began teaching me how to do massages. I learned that there were all kinds of techniques for giving massages, along with different reasons why people get massages in the first place. The night before she had to go back to work, she got more talkative than usual and shared a bit of information about her job:

"Our customers are all over the map with what they want. They all want to relax, but there's a lot of ways to get them there. To be honest, a lot of our clients don't want anything sexual. They just want to relax."

"But you do have customers who do want... you know... sex stuff?"

"Sure we do. And we do offer 'special services', but Gi-Gi's has real strict rules about what we can and can't do. The two big ones are that the customers can't touch us, and we can't take off any part of our uniform. They've got cameras set up in all the rooms to make sure we follow those two rules. If a customer tries touching one of us, we warn him once. If he tries touching again, we hit a buzzer and he get's kicked out. If any of us takes off anything during a massage, she gets fired. The uniform policy is really strict and we make sure the customers know that before we start."

She added something I thought was interesting:

"To be honest, if I could, I'd prefer to be naked when I give massages. Like I am with you. But I know that'd get misinterpreted and they'd expect to have sex with me. Being nude always gets misinterpreted. So Gi-Gi is right about the uniforms. It keeps our customers focused on themselves and just trying to relax instead of anything else."

"What's your thoughts on your customers?"

"They're just like everyone else. A lot of them are really nice. A few are shit-bags, but those get dealt with real fast. Most are just kinda, there. They want their massage, they pay, they leave, and next week they're back for another session."

"And you got regulars?"

"Of course I do."

"What's that like?"

"Depends on the customer. Some want the exact same thing, week after week. Others want to try something different every time they come in. Some tell me exactly what they want, and as long as it doesn't break house rules, I'll do what they ask. Others leave it up to me, how I massage them. Some tip better than others, but if a guy wants to become a regular, usually he tips decent. Some of them wanna talk, but I don't encourage that. My attitude is: 'look dude, you're here to relax. I can't solve your other problems. Try to enjoy the moment. That's what you're paying for.' Of course, I don't say it like that, and if they insist on talking, I'll let 'em."

"What about, you know, the 'special services' that you mentioned? What exactly do you do if you can't have sex?"

"The most common thing we do is what's called a 'happy ending', where we simply jack them off. Another thing we do is put a finger up their ass and work their prostate. I've done similar stuff with you, but of course it's different with women. But you got the idea."

"How long have you been doing it? I mean, you're not much older than me..."

"I started the day after my 18th birthday. Before that I was working at a Mega-Burger. And let me tell you, don't ever work at Mega-Burger. The two worst jobs in the world are handling food and handling cash. I had to do both. It sucked so bad I was thinking about suicide. Anyhow, there was this one girl I was working with who told me that she was gonna quit right after she turned 18, and I asked her what she was planning to do. I figured she was going in the military. And she said 'fuck that, I'm not going in the military'. Then she told me what she was gonna do. She had a cousin who worked at Gi-Gi's who hooked her up and she was gonna train to work there. She had the job lined up and just had to get her driver's license to prove she was 18 and she'd start. When she told me how much money she was gonna get and what the conditions were like, I was like 'whoa'. Think about it. Nice quiet room with no noise except some music, no constant yelling of orders, no beep-beep-beep of those fucking cash registers, no grease flying everywhere, no bitchy mothers and their screaming kids, and no hold-ups."

"Hold-ups? You got held-up?"

"Sure did. Twice while I was there. And I was working the register both times, and one of those times they pointed a gun right at my face. I pissed myself I was so scared, and the manager told me to come to work the next day like it was nothing."

She took a deep breath and sat up. She rubbed her forehead and stared at the window. She took a breath and continued:

"Having that gun pointed at me kinda fucked me up for a while. I kept having nightmares about that thing pointed at me and seeing the flash and hearing the bang, and then I'd wake up. I kept having those dreams, and it was always the same. The gun, the flash, the bang, and then I'd wake up. One night, it was real late, I went outside after 'cause I couldn't get back to sleep. And, I don't know why I did it, but I took off my clothes. Everything. I threw everything on the ground and just started running. I ran about five blocks and then I stopped. I was like: what the fuck am I doing? I'm fucking naked in the fucking street. So I ran back and put my stuff back on. But then, when I got back to my room, I got this huge... I don't know how to describe it, but I felt really great. That was the first time I went streaking."

"So, when you went there, to Gi-Gi's I mean, what happened?"

"My co-worker from Mega-Burger introduced me to Gi-Gi. She asked me some questions, mostly about my Mega-Burger job, and then made sure I understood what they do at a massage parlor. Then she told me to come back when I had my driver's license. The day I turned 18, I got my state ID (I never learned how to drive) and went back. It was real simple. She gave me a uniform and told me to go in with whoever was working at the moment and assist with four-hand massages. I copied whatever the other girl was doing until I got the hang of it. After a month I was taking customers on my own. That's how I started."

"Any regrets?"

"Not really. You don't have regrets when you can leave a Mega-Burger job for something better. Well, maybe there's one. Yeah there is a regret, and I guess it's a big one. I'm no longer into guys. I used to be, but having to work on all those male bodies, day in and day out, kinda made me grossed-out by men. I think that's one thing that's been kinda bothering me."

I didn't know how to respond to that. But it did make sense. I answered with the only thing I could think of.

"I can see that. Mom's kinda the same way. She totally hates coffee. Won't let it in the house. Says being a barista and smelling it all day totally turned her off of coffee. I guess that..."

Yvonne looked at me with an incredulous expression.

"What the fuck are you talking about? Your mom doesn't like coffee? So what? I think there's a difference between being turned-off by men and being turned-off by coffee."

"Yvonne, don't get so pissed. I'm just trying to understand where you're coming from."

She managed to calm herself. She lay back down and cuddled next to me. Neither of us said anything more.

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For the rest of the time I was with her, I was always grateful for that one conversation. It was the only time she was able to open up to me about anything serious. But it was enough to give me an idea of her struggles, both the ones she had in her world and the ones she had inside her head.

There were a lot of details about Yvonne's life I never learned, in spite of our close relationship. I never learned much about her family, apart from the hints she dropped about how much she disliked her father and how much she loathed the woman who had moved in with him. She never told me if they had married or had any formal arrangement, nor anything about the woman's kids. I never found out their names, ages, or even what sex they were. I knew absolutely nothing about her birth mother, nor if she had any siblings or half siblings on her mother's side of the family.

I always took it for granted that someday she'd let down her guard and talk to me about her life at home, in the same way she suddenly talked about her job. I figured something would trigger her to open up, in the same way my having seen her t-shirts got her to talk about Gi-Gi's. It was something that would just happen one day: there was nothing I could do to speed it up. There was a good chance it would be something unpleasant, a crisis or fight, and then she'd talk. Knowing that, I decided not to push it. Maybe I was curious about Yvonne's home life, but there was a big part of me that cautioned: seriously? Are you really that desperate to know what she's dealing with at home? Is there anything in your life that gives you a perspective she could relate to? Maybe you just need to enjoy what you've got and leave the rest alone.


Chapter 09